Polio Cases Rise to Nine in Pakistan as PM Orders New Plan in a Week

Photo: ARY News

Pakistan has recorded its ninth polio case of the year, a seven-month-old baby from Khyber district, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has told health officials to visit all four provinces and bring him a coordinated plan to wipe out the disease within a week.

The child is from Bara, in the same district that has now reported three cases this year. Seven of the nine cases so far are from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and the virus in the Khyber cases traces back to strains circulating across the border in Afghanistan.

Shehbaz chaired a review meeting on polio eradication in Islamabad on Thursday. He told the federal health minister, the minister of state, the health secretary and the anti-polio team to go to the provinces, sit with the chief ministers and chief secretaries, and come back with one national action plan in seven days.

"Achieving a polio-free Pakistan is a major challenge, but our determination and resolve are far stronger than this challenge," the prime minister said at the meeting, pressing for close coordination between the provinces and every department involved.

The numbers behind the meeting tell their own story. The National Emergency Operations Centre confirmed the latest case, a baby from Union Council Mastak in Bara tehsil, as the third from Khyber district and the seventh from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this year. The tally had stood at seven before this week, when Karachi reported its first case in nearly two years. Within the province, Khyber and Bannu have three cases each and North Waziristan has one. Sindh has reported two cases, one in Karachi East and one in Sujawal.

Two provinces, meanwhile, have held the line. Punjab has not reported a new case since February 2025, and Balochistan has stayed free of new cases through 2025 and 2026. Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan also remain polio-free, and officials told the meeting that poliovirus detection in environmental samples from Sindh has fallen this year.

Genetic tests on the virus found in all three Khyber cases linked it to strains circulating in Afghanistan, and officials said movement across the border remains a major reason the virus keeps spreading. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where wild poliovirus has never been stopped.

The prime minister also ordered better routine immunisation, above all in areas where polio is still found or the risk is high, and said the safety of frontline workers and their access to every community must stay the top priority. The danger is real: two policemen were martyred in Mohmand while on polio duty. He praised the polio workers and law enforcement staff who keep the campaigns running, and noted that teams are now reaching security-sensitive and hard-to-reach areas better than before.

A week-long vaccination drive is already under way. It started on 2 November and aims to reach about 24 million children under five in 97 districts, with around 200,000 frontline workers going door to door. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alone the drive is targeting more than 4.8 million children across 27 districts, and it runs until 8 November.

For parents, the message from the meeting is simple. Polio has no cure, but the drops work, and the teams knocking on doors this week are there to protect children under five. Anyone unsure whether their child has had the drops should take them to the nearest health centre or ask the vaccination team when it visits.

The meeting was attended by Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar, Climate Change Minister Musadik Malik, Economic Affairs Minister Ahad Cheema, National Health Services Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, Minister of State for National Health Services Dr Malik Mukhtar Ahmad Bharath and the prime minister's focal person on polio eradication, Ayesha Raza Farooq.

Sources

• Aaj English: Shehbaz orders urgent polio strategy as cases rise to nine
• Hum English: PM calls for coordinated efforts to eradicate polio as Pakistan reports ninth case
• ARY News: Pakistan kicks off week-long anti-polio campaign targeting 20.4 million children

The health team starts its visits to the provinces in the coming days, and the new national plan is due within a week.

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